The Secret Sex Life of Truffles

The New York Times reports on decoding of the Périgord black truffle’s genome by a team of French and Italian researchers. Apparently it is made up of 125 million units of DNA that contain about 7,500 genes. Among other things discovered is that truffles, long been thought be asexual, in fact have two sexes, or mating types. Another interesting thing in the article is that it seems that what attracts truffle flies (the pheromones anisole and veratrole) is different to what attracts pigs (the hormone androstenol) to the same truffles.